This invention concerns the taking of blood samples from a living patient, for instance for haematological examination.
It is often necessary to take blood samples repeatedly from a patient, successive samples being taken at prescribed time intervals so that, for instance, the progress of a disease or of a treatment procedure may be monitored. Using conventional sample-taking techniques, wherein the taking of each sample is a time consuming and relatively skilled task, the taking of a regular sequence of samples at relatively short time intervals is very demanding upon the operator so that operator workloads and duty periods in a busy hospital or laboratory may often make it impracticable for samples to be taken as regularly and/or at as short intervals as might otherwise be desired. There is therefore a need for automation of the blood-taking procedure in a manner that will enable useful blood samples safely to be taken from a living patient at prescribed intervals of time and with minimum supervision by a skilled operator.
An object of the present invention is therefore to provide an apparatus capable of performing this task.